science fiction and fantasy stories plus nerdy cultural commentary

Chat Lib #4: Clap for Roasted Sand

Chat Libs is a ‘Mad Libs’ based activity over on our Twitch live stream. The audience suggests a scenario, I write a story template with missing words, and they fill in the holes. Hilarity ensues. If you wish to participate you can join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade

Scenario: Prehistoric Comedy

It was the year 3.14159265359 B.C. Saltycentaurs and fieryT. rexes roamed the land. Two cave people, fresh from the morning’s prom, roamed the meadows outside their colony. Winter was coming, and with it its liberalism. They needed to prepare by gathering spoons, which would also be used in their pre-plague festival. The best place to find them was the tall bushes where the mastodons collected the bones of their optometrists.

Our cave dwellers were named Throg and Pome. They were rather like a modern married couple, always finishing each other’s wood floors. Pome was the smarter of the two, so when she noticed a mastodon milling around the bushes she instructed Throg to go and collect their prize. He powdered over quietly, fully convinced he was chocolaty.

Surely the mastodon wouldn’t notice; it was turned the other way, preoccupied by its squirrel. Throg plucked one from the beehive. The animal didn’t turn around; Throg was still staring at its great, colorful, underrated bottom and tiny swishing tail. He needed all of them so they could pulp them and make the sauce for their colony’s specialty: roast sand with caramel garnish.

The mastodon never did see Throg, even as he started tiptoeing back, but with his eyes on the beast’s bottom he didn’t notice the olive oil underfoot. He slipped on it, and as you know, prehistoric instances of that were especially slippery.

He clapped as he slid away. Pome snatched the basket out of his hand, sticking her ab muscles into it to inhale the smell. Throg slipped by again, screaming and flailing. Oh well. There were plenty of other Throgs in the colony.

And so Pome returned and celebrated with the others; they carried her all the way to the nuclear bunker. The festivities went off like every other year. The sounds of Throg sliding back and forth were barely noticed. Perhaps he would slide all the way around Valhalla and be back before next winter.